Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant is a campy sci-fi flick that oozes humour and goop alike in a thoughtful examination of the experience of pregnancy. Beneath the body horror, kiwi facetiousness and extra-terrestrial physical affects, the debut feature film of director duo Sean Wallace and Jordan Mark Windsor, known together as Thunderlips, seriously levels with medical misogyny. This mixture of opposite extremes makes for a feature both grotesquely fun and politically grounded.

The film’s opening credits play against a background ambiguously interstellar or intercellular, introducing the recurring images of extraterrestrial anomalies and the human body in extreme, maybe grotesque, closeness. This opening credits montage finishes with the camera panning out to protagonist Mary (Hannah Lynch)—a disenfranchised millennial still living with her mum, Cynthia (Yvette Parsons)—eating ice cream with chips on the plain front lawn. Whilst doing a midnight round of laundry, Mary encounters Boo (Arlo Green), the reticent alien-penis-having neighbour who also still lives with his Mum, and they have a sexual encounter which dramatically leaves Mary alien pregnant. From here on, Mary navigates the out-of-this-world chaos of alien pregnancy, including the medical institutions which fail to give her the care she requires, and the cultural expectations of the pregnant person.

One of the film’s strengths was its visual elements, with its sets electrified with both campy extravagance and also, frequently, real electricity. There were flashing lights, so much goo, blue vomit and gunky fluids. The sound effects only enhanced the sliminess, with ominous gurglings and grumblings oozing through the soundscape of the movie. The often deliberately lo-fi effects were part of the film’s facetious charm.

This visual indulgence, largely through physical effects, did pose the occasional problem for the film’s coherence, raising questions like why does the alien penis manipulate electricity and why does Mary get trapped inside a uterine dome that feeds off her farts? While asking these questions isn’t in the spirit of the movie, I imagine the answer that Thunderlips would give is “because we can.” The film was happily committed to unbridled creative absurdity over the trivial incident of a watertight and coherent plot.

These aesthetic predilections worked themself into the dialogue, set design and even the characters, who were all full of artifice, but delightfully so. Boo is constantly stuttering, indecisive and spineless; Cynthia transcends Mary’s privacy as if boundaries simply did not exist; and Mary herself is wonderfully sardonic and gritty. Lynch captured the woes of alien pregnancy without sacrificing Mary’s grounded and sarcastic character, and her performance was a standout. The dialogue was also unashamedly absurd and included the terrific line “your penis is like proof of other intelligent life in the universe, right?” amongst others.

The film smartly sidestepped issues of consent in the initial sexual encounter between Mary and Boo, instead examining women’s agency during pregnancy. In this midnight laundry “sex scene” (this feels too strong for what it is), Mary controls the encounter, asking Boo about his alien penis whilst she is sat atop the washing machine like a queen upon her throne. Boo, stuttering, a bit of a mess, is instructed to pull down his pants and close his eyes, while Mary is free to gaze at Boo and his alien penis. Although Mary was the victim of Boo’s “vag-seeking acid spunk” (real quote), there was no question about Mary’s consent and agency in this scene, allowing the film to find its thematic stronghold in medical misogyny and the experience of pregnancy.

We first see this medical misogyny when Mary visits the doctor the day after this encounter. The male doctor dismisses Mary’s grotesque, sci-fi-like symptoms as “nothing to worry about”, a result of “hormones”, something “completely normal”. Later in the film, as the alien pregnancy progressively causes a myriad of torturous and otherworldly symptoms, Mary struggles to get an abortion due to the paperwork, psych meetings and tests required of her. Bureaucracy takes precedence over her pain, which is ignored or dismissed to farcical extremes.

Boo, too, is a victim of the callousness of medical institutions—when he goes to hospital to support Mary, his alien penis, which is unequivocally yonic, is medically investigated without his consent. The real villain in the story was not the overbearing mother or the manchild Boo, but the medical institutions that repeatedly sideline non-hegemonic bodies and experiences. The medical institutions that allowed a surgeon to perform unnecessary endometriosis surgeries on hundreds of women and then refused these women participation in an external review. The medical institutions which, according to the Bridging the Gender Pain Gap report, ignored, dismissed, or minimised the pain of 71% of its AFAB patients.

Outside of this medical context, whenever Mary disclosed her pregnancy, she was met with cheery congratulations (except for when she encountered a group of young women, who instead sighed in sympathy). Cynthia, too, continually reminded Mary of her own pregnancy, describing it as “empowering” and “rewarding”, and emphasising how major a life event it is. These comments and congratulations sidestep the most obviously pressing issue: Mary’s bodily autonomy being compromised by the demonic alien baby growing inside her, and her utter inability to do anything about it.

Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant is grotesquely fun, packed with charming humour, extravagant characters and physical effects. Though beneath the layers of goop and artifice is a deeper commentary on pregnancy and womanhood.

MUM, I'M ALIEN PREGNANT will screen as a part of the 74^th edition of the Melbourne International Film Festival on the 14^th and 15^th of August.